Occlusion
by Darkrealmist v.2
Summary: Mu Yanling searches for a method to reverse the course of history. After exhausting countless leads, she confronts Sarkhan Vol, a man out of time.


Occlusion

Author's Note: If any details here contradict Wizards' later canon, it can be blamed on clockworking (hurr). Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of _Magic: The Gathering_.

Summary:

Mu Yanling searches for a method to reverse the course of history. After exhausting countless leads, she confronts Sarkhan Vol, a man out of time.

* * *

_From a sea of infinite possibilities, our choices create the future._

Mu Yanling comforted herself with this guiding principle, which felt supremely poignant whenever she made the _incorrect_ choice. So many missteps cluttered her past that her current self could be viewed a river of mistakes and tragedies.

Her homeland swallowed by a rogue wave.

Her wandering mentor suddenly dropping dead, and then disappearing without a clue when she regained consciousness.

She could fly, yet the currents always found means to pull her back under.

For ages long and weary, she sought evidence of Li Shan's continued health. Journeys taking her to the furthest corners of the Eternal Divided Realm and Dark Sea of Penglai.

Was Li Shan truly gone? Did he really die?

Fancifully, she'd entertained whether he also carried a spark. That he'd merely blinked across space. Testing her. Waiting for her to learn her potential and track him down among the myriad realities seeding the Blind Eternities.

Time.

Time was something she had in abundance, now that the Multiverse escaped an Elder Dragon's dictatorship. But it was of the wrong sort. She didn't desire more of it – more opportunities to slip up. She desired to be set free from its persistent haze.

If Li Shan drew no breath, she'd undo his death and her foibles in one fell swoop.

Hoping to uncover the secrets of time magic, she visited innumerable sites both on and off-world, including the Ten Wizards Mountain, the libraries of the Soratami capital Oboro high in the clouds of Kamigawa, and the Barrinite campuses of Dominaria's Tolarian Academies, where she scoured tomes and scrolls old as recorded history.

Most intriguing were hushed rumours of an especially forbidden, dangerous art. Unverified and unverifiable hearsay purporting said skill's practitioners could move "sideways" through timestreams, and that an expert of this technique could conceivably _pick_ every event's outcome to their liking.

The accounts were so unreliable governing authorities refused to even utter its name, going so far as to de-canonize its mention in all official texts.

Wherever her search guided her, however, the story was always the same. Meddling with time was never a good idea. It created paradoxes and unravelled planar fabric. The last major temporal upheaval was only solved when several Planeswalkers sacrificed their lives and sparks, triggering the Mending.

If a mage wasn't careful, they risked becoming trapped in fast or slow time bubbles, or erasing themselves from existence. Teferi, the professed master of temporal magics, had been very clear about that.

Yanling would not bow to the inhospitable present. Otherwise, she would not have flown here to Qal Sisma, the snow-capped peaks of Tarkir's glacial frontier.

A dragon dodged the ribbon of water Yanling sent to bind her quarry.

In their gelid state, the rough mountain ranges offered her limited recourse. Under better conditions, she could conjure elemental birds to distract the monster while she knotted her ropes around its scaly hide. Tarkir's mana, dismally, leaned wild and violent. It resisted her attempts to tame it.

The biting cold prevented her from weeping tears she could harness either.

Annoyed at the handicap, she dove, gracefully kicking her heels on the air. Nearing the bluffs, she channelled power into a thawing spell, chipping apart the packed ice and extracting moisture hardened by the rime.

On her plane, people believed Yinglong the Ancestor Dragon sired life. To attack what begot you was unimaginable. You do not show such impunity towards your creator.

But this was no divine archetype, nor was it a grand schemer flaunting designs on ruling the Multiverse.

No. This "dragon" was mortal.

Projecting her mind's reach beneath the glaze, she strained, summoning a waterspout that crashed out the permafrost. It ducked and weaved, an animated rhythmic vortex slithering as a serpent does, snapping its torrential maw upon her target. Lashing the predator's body with whips of fathoms-deep brine.

Impacting a cliff, the creature shook off its false (or was it true?) form and wet nuggets of bloodied snow.

"Who dares disturb my meditation?" the angered warrior roared at the woman with silver hair.

"I am Mu Yanling. A Planeswalker, like you."

"You are aware of my gift? Speak quickly, hydromancer, or I might cut out your tongue!"

"In our story-circle, Narset has told me of a dragon-man, a sar-khan, who appeared from the Unwritten – a spiritual vision of the future that an ancient clan called the Temur wrote about."

"Narset…" he choked down a knowing laugh. "My friend's been chatty, I see."

"I dismissed the story as myth. Superstition. That is, until I witnessed you transform and burn Nicol Bolas' Eternals to cinders on Ravnica. You are an orphan of time, dear nomad. A curiosity."

"And what are you?"

"A seeker. I have come seeking the one who answers to _Sarkhan_, that he may teach me how he travelled backward through time."

"You assume I am the same man Narset recounts in her tales? I am hardly the first to garb myself in a dragon's raiment."

"Be that as it may, you're my best shot."

"Then you've embarked on a fool's errand. The magic you thirst for, I already used up."

"Irrelevant. If you tell me how you did it, I can perhaps still alter the miseries of my life."

"You think you'd survive the return to fully grasp the changes you've wrought? I didn't. I was never born at all." He smiled cryptically. "You would be wise to leave this place before _she_ arrives. Violating Atarka's territory is an error none make twice. Her appetite is infamous. As a Planeswalker, you're at an advantage over the locals. Atarka won't eat you if there's nothing of you left on Tarkir to hunt."

Sarkhan collected his spear, planeswalking away.

Yanling grimaced.

A setback, for sure.

She'd pursue him to the ends of the Multiverse if that's what it took. To gain his unique insight.

She had time.

Always more time.


End file.
